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Denarius wasn’t a bad guy, per se, but he sure as Death wasn’t a nice one. That hadn’t seemed to change in the ten years since we had last seen each other. And clearly, we both still held grudges. And for me, that was really saying something.
My punch landed, but it was more of a glance. Thanks to his father, he had vampire speed, so he was able to react with lightning-fast reflexes—and react. Just as quickly as I threw my fist, he threw his, and shamefully, I wasn’t fast enough. Denarius’s knuckles smashed into my cheekbone and sent me stumbling back.
“Den! Bas!” Tess shouted, trying to get between us. “Stop it, you idiots!”
Although my pride commanded I keep engaging, I was glad to end what I couldn’t help but start. A fight would do no good for anyone.
Denarius, on the other hand, hissed and bared his fangs. “Come on, Bas. Is that really all you got? Did all you do on that farm was chase chickens around?”
My face pounded with blood to heal the bruise. I bared my teeth back. “I trained! Want to see what I learned? Penagrum!”
I shouted the most infamous and useful spell a witch could know. A circle rapidly drew itself into the ground around Denarius’s feet, glowing a fiery blue, with a five-pointed shape in the middle. From it shot a haze upward like a half-transparent wall. Denarius was too riled up to register, and the dumb idiot tried to charge me. Instead, he slammed face-first into the trap’s confines.
“What in Death’s name is going on in here?” Vidar’s voice boomed from the shadows as he, Koen, and Sloan ran back into the cave.
They quickly analyzed the scene and I shrunk back, wondering if Koen would forbid me from leaving Ophir ever again. But when he swung his gaze from Denarius to me, his hazel eyes showed nothing but amused exasperation. I refrained from grinning because he was fighting one. He winked in an obvious message: Good one.
Beside him, however, Sloan elbowed him. “He’s in trouble,” she muttered through clenched teeth before guiding Tess and Em toward the entrance. “You two go back to the Main.”
“But—” they both protested, but Sloan silenced them with a glare.
Meanwhile, Vidar was giving Denarius an earful, though he hadn’t asked me to drop the spell. “You’re home for mere minutes, and the first thing you do is attack your peer?”
Denarius glared at me as if I were the ultimate enemy, not vampires. “He wronged me! What is he even doing here? I thought he was never coming back.”
Vidar’s eyes flashed with remembrance. “You’re still mad about that? It’s been ten years, rock-for-brains. You were barely ten years old. We do not hold petty grudges here in the Kairos. Apologize.”
Koen came to stand beside me, resting his arm over my shoulders. “No need to apologize, right, Bas?”
I blinked. “What?”
“You’re going to apologize first.” His demeanor had shifted to seriousness; he wouldn’t look at me. “The way I remember it, it was your fault back then. And you trapped your peer in a penagrum. That’s against one of our laws.”
Ignoring Denarius’s smug smile, I sighed, knowing resisting was useless. “I’m sorry, Denarius, for pulling that prank on you. We used to be friends until I put a mouse in your dinner when you weren’t looking. I didn’t expect it to take a—”
Koen squeezed my shoulder to stop, but I added impulsively, “I wouldn’t count it as ‘being wronged.’ That’s a big dramatic. You’re the one who pushed me into the river and held my head underwater—”
Denarius’s face could have gone beet-red if it could, but Vidar whipped to glare furiously at him, which was quite frightening with his sheer size. “You what?!”
Koen stared at me, too. “You never told anyone that.”
Shoving the traumatic memory aside, I lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t want to cause problems.”
“Release him, please, Bastian,” Vidar growled, “so I may bestow a belated punishment on my great-nephew.”
I obeyed, and Denarius slunk after Vidar out of the cave, casting a vengeful glare at me as we passed. It flicked to Koen for the briefest of moments. Koen’s grip tightened on my shoulder just as momentarily. A sense of dread slithered down my spine. What did that mean?
“I’m sorry you went through that, Bas,” Koen said once they were gone. “Can we talk?”
“Uh, sure. I’m not in trouble, right?”
Koen laughed and guided me out, heading to one of the “lounge” caves where friends or family hung out just to chat. “You’re definitely not in trouble. I wanted to talk to you about Maer.”
Anticipation coursed through my veins, but so did apprehension. All I ever wanted to know was who my mother was and what she was like before she died, but the way Koen said it, like he was about to deliver bad news, made me wonder if I should just treasure what I already had.
We got comfortable on the quilt-laden wooden couches. Taking a page from Tess’s book to jump right into the topic, Koen began like telling an old legend,
“Maer Whisler was a seventeen-year-old Gladiator in the Moros coven, a hotheaded young woman who barged through life shamelessly just to survive. Cirillo Kaladin, of course, was the coven leader, objectively ranked fourth out of the Cardinal Four for ruthlessness. He...seduced...Maer,” he said, voice straining on the words, “which resulted in you, Bas.”
I flinched at the blunt, horrible truth, sending such raw hate through my body that I surprised myself. I recognized pain—I’d clenched my jaw so tight it hurt, and my fingernails dug indents in my palm. All vampires did was take and ruin.
“Ciel,” Koen continued, “is undeniably unhinged. With Cirillo obsessed with Maer, not knowing she was carrying his spawn, Ciel viewed Maer as a threat to her position as heir. It’s a mystery why she thought she would ever become the next leader when Cirillo had no plans of handing his title over to anyone—none of the leaders ever considered stepping down. When you’re an immortal, you think you’re invincible. Maybe Ciel was plotting to kill her father someday.” Koen made a face. “If that were ever a possibility, I would rather have Cirillo. Not that it mattered, with my being in Bloodfrost.
“Anyway,” he went on, “Ciel feared Cirillo would Turn Maer and make her his new heir, whether making her his new wife or personal Bleeder.”
My lip curled in disgust and disbelief. “She’s insane.”
Koen nodded. “Yessir. So much so that she sought me to help her get rid of Maer.”
“What? How?”
“Well,” he said, clearing his throat in sudden embarrassment. “I didn’t hide my attraction to her very well. Ciel noticed and asked me if I wanted Maer to join Bloodfrost. Long story short, she arranged for us to be sold at a black market to Aeros.”
Aeros Adelio, the leader of Rhidian, who ensured himself the title of the “Gold God.” As far as the Kairos knows, he was still alive somewhere.
“Backtracking a little,” I ventured, “Cirillo wanted to Turn Maer—my mother”—it felt so good to say that!—”because he was obsessed with her. He...wasn’t successful, right? Ciel said she threw me in a river and made Cirillo think I was dead.” That didn’t feel good to say.
Koen’s expression was sympathetic. “She was telling the truth about that. Her hallucination ability is powerful. But like the other leaders, she’s self-preserving. She fled the scene before she could be targeted.”
I quirked my head to the side in confusion, so Koen explained, “Cirillo and Ciel were present when Maer gave birth prematurely. Ciel didn’t bother trying to kill Maer because she was already dying.” Pain entered his voice and made it hoarse. “I was there, too, but there wasn’t anything I could do but promise to protect you. Cirillo held you in his arms, perfectly alive thanks to your vampire blood alone, thinking you were stillborn. But...but Maer had bled out. She was dead. He couldn’t Turn her.”
A solemn silence thickened the air as Koen dropped his head into his hands. My heart clenched. I had never seen Koen this emotional. For as long as my superior vampire memory could remember, he was always quick to joke and tease, a capable fighter who excelled as a mentor at teaching not only fighting moves and spells but life lessons. I respected and looked up to him as a father—at least, that was what I imagined the relationship was supposed to be like between father and son.
Koen used to love Maer. I didn’t know the true extent of their relationship—being sold at an illegal auction and then escaping Sanlow, something that anyone rarely survived, surely brought them close—but I knew exactly how much mortal peril brought people together. And to see Koen at a low point made me realize that my mother was the reason—or at least part of it—he was the way he was now. Because of his lingering love for her, he raised me to be the soldier I was.
I owed both of them my life.
“Thank you, Koen.”
Koen jerked his head up at my croaked words. I cleared it and repeated, hopefully much more confidently, “Thank you, Koen.”
Abruptly, Koen lurched from his chair to crush me in a hug. I immediately hugged back. His scent, as familiar as my own reflection, wreathed around me, reminding me of my early childhood when I needed comfort from the difficult livelihood of an underground dweller without parents.
“Thank you, Bastian,” Koen murmured into my shoulder, for giving us a purpose. Sloan and I, and then Rhetta, we needed you as much as you needed us. We’re so proud of who you’ve become.” He pulled away to look at me with bright hazel eyes. “I’m sorry we kept so much from you.”
My throat was tight with tears, but I didn’t let them choke my words again. “It’s okay now, as long as we’re honest with each other from now on.”
Koen nodded vigorously. “Deal.”
“And it’s all thanks to you that I’ve grown up. I’m an adult now, but I still need you.”
Koen smiled and laughed shakily as he regathered his composure and returned to his chair. “Good. No matter how old you get, you’ll always be the little kid who tried to bite me every time I picked him up because he refused naptime.”
My skin burned with embarrassment at the memory, but I didn’t mind at all and protested jokingly but truthfully, “My adult fangs were coming in, and they hurt!”
Koen laughed, and the air felt much clearer as secrets vanished between us. “Anyway. Back on topic. What questions do you have?”
I followed his lead by growing serious again, though less serious than before. “So Maer didn’t actually do anything to make the vampire community want me dead.”
Koen shook his head. “A long time ago, she spread rumors that grew to legend and supposedly fact ingrained in the vampire community. Maer was just a talented Gladiator.”
My mind shuffled through all the questions that had been building up for a while. “What about Amate? I don’t know much about her.”
“Amate is just a vengeful Moros vampire,” Koen said grimly. “She wants to kill all the coven leaders but only managed to kill Cirillo. She’s been hunting them, especially Ciel, ever since the Liberation. The much older vampires know how to evade her. The Kairos tracks her movements, though it’s been more difficult now that she has mobilized her army of Turned vampires and witches. It’s a mystery why she has multiple sworn to her allegiance. The ‘Liberation’ is called that instead of the ‘Destruction’ because the chaos freed the humans. ‘Bloody’ because of the sheer amount of lives lost from all three races.”
I recalled just how bloody Sanlow was in my vision of the burning city. “Why does Amate want Ciel so badly?”
“Ciel is an heir to a coven. Amate wants to destroy all of the leaders who enslaved the people of Sanlow. Aeros Adelio of Rhidian, Agana Kirsi of Bloodfrost, and Tanith Taran of Elarian are all at large—and so are some of their heirs. Amate wants to destroy them all. She’s just taking her time doing it.”
“This is your daughter’s fault as much as yours,” Amate had told Cirillo just before she killed him. “The moment you die is the moment I will chase her to the end of the world if need be. She must die, and I will relish in the knowledge that she now watches us. I know you are watching, and I hope your scheming was worth it. I will not kill you today, but rest assured, you will die by my hand. Say goodbye to your father now. Spread this word. Spread the name Amate, who burned the city of Sanlow and named this night the Bloody Liberation.”
“Why?” I asked Koen. “That just gives the leaders time to plan an attack. And why do you think Ciel wants Galen’s spellbook?”
He nodded darkly. “I don’t know why Ciel wants it, but it must be a part of whatever goal she’s been simmering on. As for Amate taking her time, it means she has another plan. And that’s more terrifying than the threat itself.”
“So what is our plan? Or at least, what do you predict it to be before we meet with Leysa tonight?”
“I’m glad you asked,” Koen said, a grin spreading across his face. “I was thinking of pitching an idea. I think it’s time to visit an old friend.”
